{"id":338,"date":"2010-07-30T05:00:06","date_gmt":"2010-07-30T11:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=338"},"modified":"2010-07-30T05:00:06","modified_gmt":"2010-07-30T11:00:06","slug":"who-can-worship-at-your-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=338","title":{"rendered":"Who Can Worship At Your\u00a0Church?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Who can worship at your church?\u00a0\u00a0Sounds like a silly question, doesn’t it?\u00a0 The church should be a place\u00a0where anyone can come and feel at home.\u00a0 I agree.\u00a0 Churches should be<\/strong><\/span> open to all, for indeed we are all sinners in need of God’s grace!\u00a0 But, we all know\u00a0churches where certain individuals or groups would not be welcome.\u00a0 Westboro Baptist Church anyone?<\/p>\n

What about your church?\u00a0 Is anyone and everyone truly\u00a0welcome to\u00a0attend your church’s worship services on Saturday night or Sunday morning?\u00a0 Do you throw open the doors to\u00a0any “guests” who might\u00a0choose\u00a0to stop by your church on any given Sunday?\u00a0 Don’t misunderstand.\u00a0 I’m talking about someone simply attending your church’s worship service, not joining the church through formal membership.\u00a0 That’s a post for another day.<\/p>\n

Before you answer those questions, think about the diverse multitude of people\u00a0who could potentially walk through the doors of your church this Lord’s Day.\u00a0 What about the person who is of a different race or ethnicity than the\u00a0majority of your church folk?\u00a0 The man who can speaks English as a second language?\u00a0 The two women who tell you they’re new to the community and introduce themselves as a “couple?”\u00a0 What about the young man and young woman who start attending your Saturday night worship service and casually let it be known that they are living together without benefit of marriage?\u00a0\u00a0Or the tattooed,\u00a0ear-ring wearing,\u00a0ex-con who just got out of prison and comes to your Sunday morning “traditional” service and sits right next to one of your blue-haired “saints?”<\/p>\n

Every Sunday in America, churches welcome these types of\u00a0diverse guests into their houses of worship.\u00a0 Sometimes we know the background of the guests.\u00a0 More often than not, we are blissfully unaware of the dirty\u00a0laundry that\u00a0they have\u00a0stuffed into the bags they bring with them.\u00a0 Sometimes, we forget that we have re-packed our own bags with the filthy clothes of sin that we once wore.<\/p>\n

However, too often, when we discover what’s in a person’s bag, we become less welcoming that we were at first.\u00a0 Periodically, I’ll have a church member ask me if I would “allow” a homosexual couple to attend worship.\u00a0 Without blinking an eye, I tell them, “Absolutely!”\u00a0 In fact, I’m sure that we have had gay individuals or couples who have worshiped with us in the past, are worshipping with us currently, or who may worship with us in the future.\u00a0 I say, “Come and be our guest.”<\/p>\n

That goes for the out-of-wedlock pregnant teen who doesn’t think she has any hope.\u00a0 Or for the newly divorced father of two who is facing one crisis after another.\u00a0 And the young couple who have just moved into together to test the waters before they get married.<\/p>\n

When you are our guest at church, that means that you can come, just as you are, and you will be welcomed and loved by those within the church.\u00a0 When you’re our guest, what that does not mean is that we affirm you just as you are.\u00a0 Our guests will hear that God loves\u00a0them so much that He was willing to send His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to\u00a0so that\u00a0they might not stay as they are, but become a new creation in Him.\u00a0 We will share with our guests the glorious Gospel\u00a0of Jesus Christ, that He came to save sinners and to take away their filthy rags of\u00a0sin and\u00a0to clothe them in\u00a0His righteous garments as they turn to Him in repentance and faith.<\/p>\n

Sunday is coming.\u00a0 You should expect that guests will attend your worship service this week,\u00a0perhaps for their first (and maybe last) visit to your church.\u00a0 And they’ll come with bags packed full of their dirty\u00a0laundry of sin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It reminds me of when I came home\u00a0during breaks from college.\u00a0 I\u00a0brought home\u00a0suitcases full of dirty clothes, but my mom always welcomed me with open arms.\u00a0 When I left home for a new semester of college,\u00a0my suitcase was full, but my clothes were clean.\u00a0 Will your church be a home that welcomes sinners who bring their bags packed with dirty clothes?\u00a0 And, will you help them receive new garments of righteousness that Christ offers?\u00a0 Who can worship at your church?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who can worship at your church?\u00a0\u00a0Sounds like a silly question, doesn’t it?\u00a0 The church should be a place\u00a0where anyone can come and feel at home.\u00a0 I agree.\u00a0 Churches should be open to all, for indeed we are all sinners in need of God’s grace!\u00a0 But, we all know\u00a0churches where certain individuals or groups would not…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23],"tags":[230,233,552,1039,1055],"class_list":["post-338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grace","tag-church","tag-church-services","tag-jesus-christ","tag-welcoming-and-affirming","tag-worship"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-5s","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}